Of personalised national projects

Former UDF Mangochi South Member of Parliament Lillian Patel was a shocked legislator in January, 2008—greatly shocked with Bingu wa Mutharika’s government.

While she was a member of the Budget and Finance Committee, former principal secretary in the Ministry of Health Chris Kang’ombe unveiled to the committee four district hospitals—namely Nkhata Bay, Phalombe, Nkhotakota and Neno—which government would prioritise in the 2008/2009 budget. Gadaffi Hospital, to Patel’s shock, was not on the list.

“What about Gadaffi Hospital in Blantyre? Has government abandoned it? We need to know its status,” queried Patel, who, during Bakili Muluzi’s rule, served as a Foreign Minister.

Patel’s shock is nothing different from the shock Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) president Peter Mutharika expressed weeks ago at the missing of Malawi University of Science and Technology (Must) in Ndata, Thyolo in the 2013/2014 budget.

Speaking to Zodiak Broadcasting Station after Finance Minister Ken Lipenga had presented the budget statement; Mutharika could not hide his thoughts.

“I am surprised that nothing was said about universities. There was no reference to Malawi University of Science and Technology. I was hoping that there would be reference on when the university should be opened to our children. We understand that the existing universities have no space and I thought there will be a reference to that,” he said.

The similarity in the level of shock displayed by Mutharika and Patel underlines the importance of the two projects to the nation at large, projects that a sensible government should not abandon.

With an estimated population of 1.2 million as of 2013, Blantyre—both urban and rural—does not have a district hospital. This, medical experts at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) argue, has led to congestion at the referral hospital.

Hence, when former Libyan president, the late Muammar Gadaffi, pledged to build a 300-bed hospital metres to the tune of K1.3 billion in 2002, it was all smiles for people in Blantyre.

Unfortunately, almost a decade later, a wall guarding thickets of untamed shrubs is the only souvenir at the site in Kameza—a reminder of a great national project in ruins.

Had it been built, the difference the hospital would have made to the country’s health sector is nothing different from the impact Must will make to the education sector if opened.

In a country where 0.001 percent access university education, Must, funded to the tune of K31 billion by the Chinese Government, is a great opportunity for Malawi to educate more people. Today, almost complete, the university remains idle, short of K25 billion to complete the buying of books, furniture, staff houses construction, water connection and other amenities.

The question, then, is: Why should projects that everybody agrees are central to Malawi’s development be abandoned?

“We have a situation in this country where after a change of government, there is inadequate continuity of policies and the programmes/projects emanating there from. Even if they are continued, it is not with the same fervour and momentum,” says Catholic University associate professor of political studies Nandine Patel.

And Chancellor College’s associate professor Blessings Chinsinga, a policy specialist in the department of political studies, understands why Malawi is always caught in such situations.

“We have the type of politics where development is not seen as a national programme, rather an individual effort to enhance his/her popularity and stay in power. Our development efforts are not nationally identified; they centre on personalities,” he says.

A look at the two projects under discussion.

The Gadaffi Hospital project began as a personal arrangement between former president Bakili Muluzi and Gadaffi. It did not begin as a government initiative, and there is proof.

For anyone wishing to construct a hospital, there are well-laid procedures and they must be followed. The Gadaffi Hospital project, it appears, bypassed these procedures.

For instance, just after Muluzi left the presidential seat, the question of ‘secrecy’ of the project and again disagreements over the hospitals’ design emerged.

Kango’mbe, in 2008, told The Nation that there was a lot of secrecy in the project which did not meet basic required standards for a hospital.

He added a ‘district hospital is required to cover a minimum of 30 hectares of land and despite availability of over 40 hectares, the Libyans had only fenced around 11 hectares’.

Caught in the dungeons of ‘secrecy’ and the ‘design’ dilemma, the project was, again, complicated by internal political conflicts between the late Bingu wa Mutharika and Muluzi. The culmination of it came in 2007. Arguing ‘we have no business with them’, Bingu’s government closed the Libyan Embassy in Malawi.

Granted, if Muluzi’s presidency continued after 2004, could the hospital project still fail to take off to date? The same question is being asked, today, of Must.

In 2007, Bingu announced that he was planning to open a private university in his Ndata home village. At the same time, his administration, with support from China, unveiled plans to construct a government university in Lilongwe.

In 2011, Bingu generated unanswered questions when he not only changed the construction of the Lilongwe university to his home village in Thyolo. Most importantly, he laid a foundation of a public university on his private land. Bingu’s government told the nation early last year that the university would be opened by end of 2012.

“We thought all was well, according to what they had planned, although we were not sure of the plans,” says Benedicto Kondowe, executive director of Civil Society for Quality Education (CSQE).

It never did. Mutharika’s death revealed that the completion of Ndata university needed government to cough K25 billion to meet amenities that were not included in the initial agreement.

President Joyce Banda’s government does not seem committed to raise the K25 billion for the completion of the university. Of course, government has revealed that the college will open this year, having allocated K1 billion to it. However, the deficit of K24 billion is just too much to give people hope.

The case of these two projects shows how acidic Malawi’s politics is to the country’s development. Why should Malawians be denied the right to good health care just because Muluzi is no longer president? Why should Malawians be denied the right to tertiary education just because Mutharika is no longer in power? n